Commercial criminal law

Due to technological progress, to growing complexity in the business field and, not least to an atmosphere of increasing interest in prosecution, commercial criminal law is subject to rapid changes. There is an increasingly dogmatic differentiation in court decisions, for example, on breach of trust, and there are new prohibitions, such as the recent penal provisions in the Separate Banks Act in response to the financial crisis. These are only two examples of the constant changes.

With our experience and specialisation in this field, we are not only always well informed about these changes, we are also able to actively shape them through our efforts to protect the rights of defendants and the defence.

The punitive measures regulating business are not to be found in a single law or in a manageable number of laws. The German Criminal Code only covers a portion, although a significant portion, of commercial criminal law. Innumerable prohibitions are regulated in individual acts and ordinances, ranging from the Act on the Posting of Workers to the Regulations on the Authorisation of Food Additives. Section 74c of the Courts Constitution Act, which governs the jurisdiction of commercial criminal courts, gives an impression of just how broad this legal field is.

In brief, commercial criminal law covers the tense relationship between the penal code and the following fields:

• Capital markets
• Competition
• Corruption
• Data protection
• Environment
• Insolvency
• IP
• IT
• Labour
• Property
• Taxes